Dysphagia Recovery Blog

This blog is intended to offer helpful information about the issues people with dysphagia and their caregivers face in efforts to still enjoy the pleasures of eating and to recover from dysphagia. Please share any tips you have discovered along the way.

Difficulty swallowing, also called dysphagia, can be caused by many different diseases and conditions, in both children and adults.

Common symptoms of difficulty swallowing (dysphagia) which indicate a need for swallow study (evaluation) and dysphagia treatment if indicated, by a speech language pathologist may include the following:

If you have any of the difficulty swallowing symptoms listed above, you should ask your physician for a referral to a speech language pathologist for a swallow test, also called a swallow study, barium swallow test, Modified Barium Swallow Study, or a Video Fluoroscopy Swallow Study. If your difficulty swallowing symptoms are obvious and mild, you may not need to have a barium swallow test. Your speech language pathologist may be able to assess your difficulty swallowing by observing you eat and drink and provide treatment for your swallowing disorder to resolve the problem with simple swallowing exercises.

In more severe cases, it may be necessary for a patient to have a diet modification, such as thickened liquids, mechanical soft diet, pureed foods, and in some cases it may be recommended that a patient have a PEG tube inserted into the stomach. With treatment for swallowing disorders with dysphagia exercises, these modifications can be temporary in many cases.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jolie Parker, M.S.CCC-SLP received her Bachelor of Science in Communication Disorders from the University of Florida and then went on to receive her Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology also from the University of Central Arkansas. She specializes in the treatment of people who have difficulty swallowing symptoms, such as having difficulty swallowing food, coughing or choking while eating, difficulty swallowing pills, and coughing or choking when drinking liquids. Many of her dysphagia patients have been on PEG tubes, mechanical soft diets, pureed diets, and/or thickened liquids and have returned to regular foods and liquids after completing dysphagia exercises with the ISO Swallowing Exercise Device, including CTAR (Chin Tuck Against Resistance) and JOAR (Jaw Opening Against Resistance) and other dysphagia exercises. Some patients who had PEG tubes and were not allowed to eat or drink anything for many months have been able to have the PEG tube removed after completing swallowing exercises with the ISO-SED.